SILENCE FILLED THE STERILE WHITE AIR BETWEEN CINDER and Dr. Erland, filled the fogginess in Cinder’s head. The confusion did not leave her face. “What?”
The doctor reached forward and put his hand over Cinder’s. “You are Princess Selene.”
She jerked away from him. “I don’t—what?”
“I know. It seems unbelievable.”
“No, it seems…that’s impossible. Why would you joke about this?”
He smiled softly and patted her hand again. Which is when Cinder realized that her vision was clear. No orange light was plaguing her.
The breath left her. Her gaze fell to the empty wires poking out from her ankle.
“I know it will take time for you to come to terms with this,” said Dr. Erland, “and I wish I could be here to help you through it. And I will. I will tell you everything you need to know when you get to Africa. But now, it is imminent that you understand why you cannot let Levana take you. You are the only one who can dethrone her. Do you understand?”
She shook her head, dazed.
“Princess—”
“Don’t call me that.”
Dr. Erland wrung the hat in his lap. “All right. Miss Linh, listen to me. I have been searching for you for so many years. On Luna, I knew the man who brought you to Earth and performed your surgery. I tracked him down in an attempt to find you, but by then he’d already started to lose his mind. All I could get out of him was that you were somewhere here, in the Commonwealth. I knew I was looking for a cyborg, a teenager—and yet there were so many times when I thought I would go crazy myself before finding you. Before being able to tell you the truth. And then you were there—suddenly—in my lab. A miracle.”
Cinder raised a hand, cutting him off. “Why? Why did they make me a cyborg?”
“Because your body was too badly damaged in the fire,” he said, as if the answer were obvious. “Your limbs could not have been rescued. It’s amazing you were able to survive at all, and that you’ve managed to stay hidden for all these—”
“Stop. Just stop.” Cinder flexed her beat-up prosthetic hand before folding it around the fingers of the brand-new limb the doctor had brought her. Her eyes darted around the cell, her breath coming in short gasps. She shut her eyes as a wave of dizziness washed over her.
She was…
She was…
“The draft,” she whispered. “You set up the draft to find me. A cyborg…in the Eastern Commonwealth.”
Dr. Erland stirred, and when she dared to look up again, guilt had filled his eyes. “We’ve all had to make sacrifices, but if Levana isn’t stopped—”
Releasing the new prosthesis, Cinder covered her ears and buried her face against her knee. The draft. All those cyborgs. So many people convinced that it was the right thing. That it was better them than humans. Once a science project, always a science project.
And he’d only wanted to find her.
“Cinder?”
“I’m going to be sick.”
Dr. Erland pressed a hand to her shoulder, but she shook it off. “Nothing that has happened is your fault,” he said. “And now I’ve found you. We can begin to make it right again.”
“How can I make anything right? Levana’s going to kill me!” Gasping, Cinder lifted her head. “Wait. Does she know?”
Her memory answered her first—Levana at the top of the stairs, frightened. Furious. She hid her face again. “Oh, my stars, she does know.”
“Your glamour is unique, Cinder, so much like Queen Channary’s. Levana would have known right away who you are, although I doubt anyone else has figured it out yet, and Levana will try to keep it hidden as long as she can. Of course, she will waste no time in killing you. I am sure they are planning their departure even at this moment.”
Cinder’s mouth grew dry.
“Look at me, Cinder.”
She obeyed. And though the doctor’s eyes were breathtakingly blue and filled with pity and almost even comforting, she somehow knew that he was not doing anything to manipulate her mind. This was just an old man who was determined to dethrone Queen Levana.
An old man who had somehow placed all his hopes on her.
“Does Kai know?” she whispered.
Dr. Erland shook his head, sadly. “I cannot approach him so long as Levana is present, and this is not something I can send via a comm. She will have taken you before I have a chance to see him. Besides, what could he do?”
“If he knew, he would release me.”
“And risk Levana turning her wrath against his entire country? Levana would find a way to kill you long before you had any hope of taking back the throne. Kai would be a fool to do something so rash, not without a plan.”
“But he deserves to know. He’s been looking for her. For…he was looking for…”
“Many people have been looking for you. But finding you and being able to reinstate you as queen are two very different goals. I have planned this moment for a long time. I can help you.”